The Master of Lovers: A Semiotic Study of A Poem by Hafez

One of the aspects of Hafiz's poetry is his satiric look towards social issues and the hypocritical people of his time. Through his sonnets, directly and indirectly, he revealed the two faces of some hypocrites of his time. He sometimes dedicated a whole sonnet to introducing such characters and usually starts a sonnet with their names and then represented different aspects of them through it. By using inter-textual signs and their relations with one another, he composed sonnets that have strong structural unity and semantic coherence. This article is going to analyze the following sonnet and tries to uncover the hidden face of the "sufi" behind it:O, sufi! Pick a flower and give garment to thorn, leave the austerity away for tasty wine!